Everywhere you look, people don't seem to be interested in understanding complicated issues. People want everything to be simple. They want problems to be fixed, and regardless of the problem, or should I say the challenge, in front of them, people want the answer to be simple and uncomplicated.
This much is clear to anyone who has ever offered an opinion in an online forum. Earlier this evening, I offered an opinion that a meme was sexist. My point was that the meme only made sense if you accepted the premise that women are in need of protection.The forum exploded with an onslaught of commentary regarding my hatred of good manners. All manners. It was assumed that I thought it was sexist to hold a door open for a female even if they had their hands full. I was forced to defend myself by claiming to be able to be polite and non-sexist at the same time.
It seems that when people want everything to be simple. Black or white. You like cats or dogs, not both, and not neither. You have to like coffee or tea. If you have sugar in tea, not having it in coffee is some kind of cultural betrayal.
It is my hypothesis that when you want everything to be simple and uncomplicated, you tend to see every idea as a simple one. The idea will either work perfectly, or not at all.
When a problem affects people, the reality of life is that problems are complex in nature, and can not be understood in totality without considering the many variations of context and the human experience. In response to these problems, the idea's that are put forward, and the impact that each idea might have on people, almost always are subject to the same level of complexity.
There are many downsides to this outlook, and the one that troubles me the most is that it positions all of us as being for, or against, every idea.
I dislike this. This makes me salty. When issues and ideas are simplified like this, it creates an environment where it becomes difficult, if not impossible to discuss an idea without being cast as being 100% for it, or 100% opposed.If you are broadly in support of an idea, then it is expected that you will support all the idea and all of the other supporters of the idea, or in fact abandon the idea, if it is supported by a person of less than stellar integrity.
The stupidist example of this that I can think of is the argument that Adolf Hitler was a vegetarian. Now I have my doubts that this is true. In researching for this post, I spent a few minutes with google and discovered many propaganda posts suggesting it is true, and a few links to actual historical references that suggest that it probably isn't.
Now where was I? Oh yes, I have actually heard people claim that you can't claim to be vegetarian for ethical reasons because Hitler was a vegetarian. Who cares. Stalin was not a vegetarian and he ate meat, so if the one is true so must the other be. Now what am I meant to eat!
The reality is that this story probably isn't true, but it is still used to discredit animal rights organisations, and people get away with this kind of point because we have all accepted the reality that if you are aligned with an idea, you must be aligned with all those that do.
If you score a point on someone with this technique, that doesn't embarrass them, it embarrasses you. If you demand someone abandon an idea because of someone else who supports it, that makes you an arsehole, not a statesman.
